Cher Talks Being a Style Icon (”It’s Fabulous!”) and Remembers Bob Mackie

Reported by Vogue.

Moncler's latest campaign isn't another hollow celebrity flex. For its new Re/Icons collection — reimagined versions of its most recognizable outerwear, including the label's signature puffer — the brand went straight to the source, casting Cher, Grace Jones, and Jennie. Shot by photographer Gabriel Moses, the campaign is exactly as iconic as that lineup sounds. And according to Vogue, the partnership with Cher wasn't manufactured: she's been reaching for Moncler since her Aspen days, drawn to what she describes as pieces that are "simple but stylish."

On set, even Cher gets nervous. She admitted to walking onto a crowded set full of strangers and needing a minute to find her footing — a detail that somehow makes her more legendary, not less. The save? Demanding Stevie Wonder over whatever the crew had queued up, and leaning on longtime collaborators choreographer Luam Keflezgy and stylist Patti Wilson. "We're similar in our OG status," Cher said of Wilson. Her campaign looks — the sleek black Verone puffer and white Himalaya jacket — were a natural fit for someone who lives in black and white and owns her cowboy boots in every color imaginable (a craftsman apparently named them the Cher Cowboy Boot, which feels right).

On Icons, Bob Mackie, and Not Planning Success

When asked how she's stayed relevant across six decades, Cher's answer was refreshingly unromantic: luck, a bumper-car willingness to reverse when something fails, and an early decision to stop fearing the uncomfortable. She was famous at 19, broke when her marriage to Sonny Bono ended, sold her jewelry in New York, and rebuilt anyway. "You can't plan success," she said flatly. Style iconhood, she added, is "sometimes fabulous, and sometimes so awful and ridiculous" — because the big jumps don't come with guaranteed landings.

The conversation turned tender when it reached Bob Mackie, the designer the fashion world is still grieving. Cher visited him just a month before his death. Their Wednesday night sessions — 11 dresses spread out, four chosen, two hours of laughing and pretending — sound less like costume fittings and more like a standing date between two people who genuinely loved what they made together. "Without Bob, I would certainly not be a fashion icon," she said plainly. He pushed her into her glamour moments; she was, as their circle joked, his Barbie doll — a stick who made everything look editorial. The dress everyone remembers, the one she wore to her first Met Gala and onto the cover of Time, wasn't even planned as a gala look. It came from a Vogue decades shoot, repurposed last minute. "Most people were surprised," Cher noted, "because it looks like you're naked." She paused on today's naked-dressing red carpet moment with the dry timing of someone who invented the concept: "They're a little late."

If there's a throughline from Aspen puffers to Bob Mackie beading to a Moncler campaign in 2024, it's this: the women who actually define style never chased it — they just refused to dress like anyone else.

Read the original at Vogue.